Romania obtained the lowest amount of European funds per capita within the EU Cohesion Policy 2014-2020, namely EUR 164 a year per person. This is half compared to Slovakia and Hungary, according to an Erste analysis.

The analysis covers a total of six countries in the CEE, namely Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia.

The total amount of EU structural and investment funds allocated to these countries for 2014-2020 is EUR 167.1 billion, around half of the total EU funds.

Almost half of the amount will go to Poland - 77.6 billion. Romania will get EUR 22.99 billion, the Czech Republic can access EUR 22 billion, Hungary - EUR 21.91 billion, Slovakia - 14 billion, and Croatia - 8.61 billion.

Based on the EU funds available per capita in 2014-2020, Romania is behind its neighbors. Slovakia ranks first with an annually EUR 369 per capita, followed by Hungary with EUR 316 per capita, the Czech Republic with EUR 299, Croatia - EUR 289 per capita, Poland - EUR 288, and Romania with EUR 164 per capita.

According to Erste, in Romania “the biggest share of the pie will go to environment and transport (over 20 percent each), but less than 8 percent was earmarked for education”.

According to the analysts, education and health are two key areas that should benefit from more funds, as those two sectors are heavily under-financed.

“Medical services are in a poor condition struggling, caused by brain drain and a lack of medical equipment in public hospitals. As for education, an increasingly higher number of primary schools in the rural area are being shut down, which increases dropout rates,” reads the report.

The country’s key priorities should be higher and more efficient funding for health and education, given that Romania needs to increase its research and development spending from 0.5 percent of GDP in 2012 to 2 percent of GDP by 2020, according to Erste.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com